UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel says quarterback was a weak spot last season and he is going to give 'the young kids a lot of early reps.' THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

UCLA spring football schedule

All practices open to the public

•Thursday, 4 p.m.

•Friday, 4 p.m.

•Saturday, 11 a.m.

•Monday, 4 p.m.

•Tuesday, 4 p.m.

•April 9, 4 p.m.

•April 11, 12:30 p.m.

•April 13, 4 p.m.

•April 14, 4 p.m.

•April 16, 4 p.m.

•April 17, 4 p.m.

•April 20, 4 p.m.

•April 21, 4 p.m.

•April 23, 4 p.m.

•April 25, 7 p.m. (Spring Scrimmage at the Rose Bowl)

LOS ANGELES -- This week is shaping up as a hectic one for freshman UCLA quarterback Richard Brehaut.

He gets up before dawn.

He works out with his new teammates starting at 6:30 a.m.

He pops into offensive coordinator Norm Chow's office for four hours of playbook review.

He attends his first three college classes.

He curls up with the playbook - which he was able to see for the first time on Monday - for a couple more hours.

It's a race against time for Brehaut, 17, if he's going to overtake the two favorites to win UCLA's quarterback competition this spring - Kevin Prince and Kevin Craft - so he has been putting in extra hours.

Brehaut said the average fan has no idea how difficult it is to grasp so many plays well enough to make the right decisions in a matter of a few heartbeats during games.

"I've gotten a good load of that stuff already and it's intense," Brehaut said.

Craft was in Brehaut's position last spring, desperately trying to learn the playbook. To everyone's surprise - including his - he was thrust into the starting job by two freak injuries to the top two quarterbacks.

Craft's performance, which included some clutch moments and a lot of moments when the opposing defensive back clutched the ball, left Chow and Coach Rick Neuheisel feeling dissatisfied.

As a result, the quarterback job is up for grabs again even though Craft is back for his senior year. Neuheisel is giving Prince and Brehaut first crack at it. For the first week of practices, they will take the majority of snaps.

It has been a while since a Bruins' quarterback had the "wow" factor, at least when that term was used with a positive connotation.

"I'm on record saying we've got to play it better and so our plan to go in is to give the young kids a lot of early reps just to see if we've got a bright, young star on the horizon," Neuheisel said.

Prince, a redshirt freshman who ran the scout team last year, looks like the frontrunner. Brehaut, who enrolled early after passing for 2,406 yards last year for Los Osos High in Rancho Cucamonga, is the X-factor.

The most pressing question: Can he learn fast enough to be a real factor? A lot of it depends on Brehaut's capacity for mental anguish. He has to volunteer for extra time with the coaches. The NCAA limits players to 20 hours of practice and official meeting time.

"He's got four classes, Football 101 being the fourth," Neuheisel said.

Brehaut sounds like he's up for a little extra tutoring. He said he and Chow often spend 15 minutes or more on a single play.

"He'll talk about, 'What if they're in this defense, then what if we do this shift, then they shift?' " Brehaut said. "He goes into such detail of exactly what you're doing. You've only got 5-6 seconds at the line of scrimmage to recognize everything you learned in that 15 minutes."

If Neuheisel and Chow pick Brehaut as the starter, his real work will just have begun. UCLA's spring playbook is a couple of inches thick. When fall camp opens in August, the players get a playbook the size of the Los Angeles yellow pages.

Unless they choose Craft, the Bruins will be stuck with a freshman quarterback one way or another. Neuheisel admits that's not ideal.

"I don't know if you're ever comfortable with that, not so much because of age as experience," Neuheisel said. "We just know we have to play that position real well. We're looking for somebody to take the bull by the horns and show that he can do it."

Pinning UCLA's 4-8 record last year on Craft is kind of like blaming a single banker for the crisis in the financial system. He was part of it, but he wasn't alone. The Bruins' offensive line got pushed around. The running backs couldn't run away from defenders.

But Craft was the face of an offense that had Bruins fans gnashing their teeth all season. His 20 interceptions set a team record.

"All I was told is that I'll have a chance to compete," Brehaut said. "That's all I wanted."

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